Iran policy based on bogus threat

Tragically, President George H.W. Bush passed up a chance for a rapprochement with Iran because, after the Soviet Union imploded, the national-security apparatus needed a new threat to stave off budget-cutters in Congress. Iran became the "manufactured crisis," according to author Gareth Porter's 2013 book by that title.

Why? That might be a good question for progressives to ask possible presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who enjoys basking in her husband's supposed presidential successes.

Porter writes:

"That ramping up of pressure on Iran by the Clinton administration was still driven by the same bureaucratic incentives that had appeared at the end of the Cold War, but it shifted into overdrive because it was linked to support of the Israeli government's drive to portray Iran as the great threat to peace in the world. ​"​

Clinton's advisers saw the threat of nuclear proliferation as the path to beefing up the national-security apparatus. It was perfect for justifying new weapons systems and a continuing role as world policeman.

Moreover, the military focus on Iran, Porter adds, "dovetailed with the Clinton administration's move to align its Iran policy with that of the Israeli government of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin." Before assuming power, Clinton signaled his intention to be "more explicitly pro-Israel than the Bush administration had been." To that end, he selected Martin Indyk as his campaign's Middle East adviser.

Indyk had been an adviser to former Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Shamir; a researcher at the chief pro-Israel lobbying organization, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee; and cofounder of AIPAC's spinoff think tank, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. (Indyk last month resigned as President Barack Obama's chief envoy to the failed U.S.-sponsored Israeli-Palestinian talks.)

The Clinton administration implemented the "dual containment" policy against Iraq and Iran. But Porter reports that Robert Pelletreau, then the Middle East policymaker in the State Department, acknowledges "that it was 'pretty much accepted in Washington' that the policy had originated in Israel."

Was there a case against Iran to justify the policy? The administration charged Iran with abetting international terrorism, beefing up its armed forces, and seeking nuclear weapons. But was there evidence?

Porter's book is a heavily documented brief showing that Iran never had a policy or took steps to acquire nuclear weapons. It sought uranium-enrichment capability in order to produce fuel for its civilian nuclear program, but it did not seek weapons. Moreover, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei had issued a fatwa condemning nuclear weapons as a sin against Islam.

As for Iran's military, the government sought to acquire medium-range missiles, but this was entirely consistent with its defense needs: Saddam Hussein of Iraq was a standing threat (he had launched an eight-year war complete with chemical attacks and missile strikes on Iran's cities, including Teheran), and Israeli leaders often spoke of the need for a pre-emptive strike against the Islamic Republic, like the one staged in 1981 against Iraq's nuclear-power reactor at Osirak.

And terrorism? "Reflecting both the hostility toward Iran within the national security bureaucracy and the influence of the Israeli line on its Iran policy, the Clinton administration also adopted the same a priori assumption that Iran was a threat to the issue of terrorism," Porter writes. In other words, Clinton didn't need evidence. Porter provides several examples of Iran being falsely blamed for terrorism committed by someone else. The pattern of blame without evidence persists.

Finally, why were Israel's leadership and American supporters so determined to put Iran at the center of U.S. foreign policy, especially when Israel's government had previously, if covertly, cooperated with the Shiite Islamic Republic on the grounds that both countries had a common enemy in Sunni extremism?

Porter's detailed and documented chapter on this aspect of the manufactured crisis concludes:

"The history of the origins and early development of Israel's Iran nuclear scare and threat to attack Iran over its nuclear and missile programs highlights a pattern in which both the [Yitzhak] Rabin and [Benjamin] Netanyahu governments deliberately exaggerated the threat from Iran, in sharp contradiction with the Israeli intelligence assessment. The ruse served a variety of policy interests, most of which were related to the manipulation of US policy in the region." ​

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Sheldon Richman, a Conway resident, is vice president of The Future of Freedom Foundation (fff.org).​